National Pie Day on Friday!

Friday, January 23, is National Pie Day. I'm posting this early enough so you'll have plenty of time to gather your recipes and bake some pies! (Check out the American Pie Council site for an interesting history of pies.)

I also enjoyed reading through this website which lists a Baker's Dozen ways to celebrate. Here are just a few:

• Bake your favorite homemade pie.
• Teach pie making or ask a grandparent to lend their expertise.
• Hold a pie night potluck and ask everyone to bring a pie.
• Talk about your favorite pie memories and pass along any family history behind them.

Here's a pie memory from my past: 

Growing up in a little southern town close to the Virginia/North Carolina border, we'd often frequent a little wayside country restaurant halfway between South Boston and Roxboro called Wilborn's Barbeque. Now, that was some good barbeque! The last time I was back home I noticed the restaurant was no longer operating--actually, it had probably closed years before--the passing of an era, and I didn't even know it.

Wilborn's was the kind of place with red and white checked cloths on the few tables scattered around a small room. I remember the counter at the register with several homemade pies just waiting to be served, and I always hoped the grownups wouldn't be too stuffed to ask if we all wanted to order a slice of pie after our meal.

German Chocolate. Coconut Cream. Lemon Chess. Apple. So many choices, such good pies! My favorite was German Chocolate, and I still remember over thirty years later that it was the best German Chocolate Pie I've ever eaten.

Sarah just made two pies...Apple Pie (which I requested) and her famous Chocolate Town Pie, which she makes quite frequently. I'm hoping there'll be at least a few slices left so we can celebrate on Friday!

Apple Pie Recipe

• 4 medium Granny Smith apples, sliced
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup flour
• dash of salt
• 1/2 tsp each nutmeg and cinnamon
• 2 tbsp butter

Mix together dry ingredients with sliced apples, place in your favorite crust recipe, dot with butter, and cover with second crust.

Bake 425 degrees for 45 - 50 minutes.

Do you have a special pie memory you'd like to share? And what's your favorite pie?

~Deb

Comments

[victoria]

My husband was recalling just the other day that when he was a little boy both his parents loved pie. So each year on George Washington's birthday his mother baked, of course, a cherry pie.
My favorite pie is probably Boston Cream Pie which is really more like a cake but I'll have to surprise my husband with a pie on Friday. He likes pie and I'm sure doesn't know it has its own holiday. Thanks for letting us know. Happy baking.

Victoria

[Nick Jesch]

no "pie" tales, but would a cobbler tale be legal?

[Becka]

My mother's mother died when Mom was only 13. She had to drop out of school to care for her little brother. She tried to make pie crust and failed, so when I was growing up the only pies she made had graham cracker crusts. When I was grown and in college my dad's mother gave her two pie crust recipes which she said were never- fail. My mom tried those and became an excellent pie baker. So, it just goes to show that a good recipe and/or proper equipment can help you achieve success in the kitchen. I love many kinds of pie and tried a new one this fall from the King Arther web-site. The difference with this apple pie recipe is that you bake it for two hours! I was skeptical at first, but it truly makes a delicious apple pie.

[Deb]

Sure, Nick, let us hear it. :)

[Pam]

Ah, yes, Wilborn's. They closed several years ago, much to the dismay of many people. I remember them best for their chitterlings (chittlin's), though I never ate any. But I do remember the food being quite good. I guess you don't stay in business that long if the food's not delicious. :)

My grandmother (Mom's mom) used to make the best Chocolate Meringue Pie i've ever eaten. She's no longer with us, but we do have her recipe. Ours just doesn't taste the same, though.

I've also made a Streusel-Topped Pear Pie, which my husband really liked. I'll have to give the Chocolate Town Pie a try.

[Nick Jesch]

Well, Deb says "sure", so here goes. Some years back most of my siblings (I've got eight of them) and Dad were at my house. Mom lived about sixty miles away, and she even showed up too. Dad had been staying with me for about a week, we went sailing, did a few other great things... thoroughly enjoyed the time together. I think it was rather an imprompty family reunion of sorts... all being at my house, a first.
It seems also to have developed over the years that whenever we sibs get together, we COOK, and we EAT... lavishly, abundantly, and mostly unconventionally. We had some sort of joint responsibility for a supper, to be shared by all (the cooking AND the eating... our "ritual". Can't recall the details of the supper, other than that I had the smoker going with some variety of things, probably including some various roasts and a largish piece of fresh salmon. We began to ponder dessert..... few options presented. Well, it WAS August... I live on five acres, my next door neighbor continues to operate the blueberry farm his great grandparents established over a hundred years ago, and they were ripe. So, we shagged the younguns into the bushes with various containers (Kenny has graciously commanded me that anytime I want to go pick, just go pick.... don't even tell anyone.) In their absence, we began to plot the fate of their harvest. No way was there time or facility for pies, the first suggestion (two small pans, oven already packed... not going to happen). How about a COBBLER? Fine... let's DO it. No one could remember how... I searched several cookbooks, not one recipe. Undaunted, I found a rule for some sweet dinner biscuits, we decided it would do for the crust with some elaborations and modifications. Found a CLEAN five gallon bucket, I still remember Michael up to his elbows in flour etc, hand-blending the dough. (no mixer at that point, and a spoon was rather outmaneouvred in the assault). What to bake it in? The ONLY thing I had to hand was one of those large Bluestone turkey roasters... PERFECT, we declared. The berries came back, they'd found the Jerseys (a hot tip from someone in the field...) and had probably ten pounds of them. Another large bowl, crushed them a bit, some sugar, a bit of lemon juice, a touch of ground cinnamon, I turned up with a bit of cornstarch.... when it "seemed right" we dumped most of them into the pan. Too much, took a bit back out, and pressed the lid into service for that and the remainder. Michael had completed his bucket manipulations, so we gobbed the biscuit dough on top of the blueberry mix.... guessed at some time/temp combination, and threw it all into the (now empty) oven. It cooked while we did our job on the contents of the smoker... someone had gone out for a couple gallons of good vanilla ice cream.... and oh, that cobbler... hard to find room inside for it, but we managed to do away with most of what was in the large pan that night. (most of us can pack it away...) Next day we all left to head up and spend that night across the water from Victoria, Canada, planning to take the ferry across in the morning. We had cobbler for dessert that night in Port Angeles as well... and there was STILL some left when we got back this side the water. Mind you, not that it was a challenge due to quality. No, it was the quantity. Remember the size of the pan and lid we'd filled... ten pounds of berries, about two gallons of biscuit dough..... yes, we had a lot. But we looked forward to the next go-round until it was all gone. I believe Dad and I ended up with the last of it after we got back to my house, the others having gone their different directions. We STILL talk about that amazing cobbler... totally unrepeatable, too. But memorable.

So, there's my cobbler adventure.

[Jane]

Hi Deb, Just took a Star Spangled Cherry Pie out of the oven! It smells yummy! Made with cherries from our trees and the crust from my Mom's old Betty Crocker cookbook. She was a wonderful pie baker because she baked them often!
Jane

[Jenny Haugh]

I'm not so great with pastry, so to celebrate I made a shepherds pie! Hopefully, that still counts :)

[Mommy of two little blessings]

Just noticed your new picture at the top...and said, to my computer *smile* "oooo that's pretty". Nice job ladies. *smile*
Blessings.-me-(Mommy of two little blessings)

[Dorothy]

Thanks for the inspiration today! I made a homemade apple pie with honey instead of sugar and an oatmeal crumb instead of a top crust...it was delicious!!!

[Molly]

I like your new blog picture at the top. The apple pie looks wonderful. We'll have to give it a try. Do you have any pictures of Ethan you can share with us?

Blessings,

Molly